"Master can't always be interrupted," she replied, "particularly by them he does n't know; but | if you will tell me your name and business, I'll see what can be done for you."

"I am Richard's mother." "Think of that now. We do our best with him, poor boy-but he 's an unruly member!" "Richard!" exclaimed the poor woman, in a tone of dismay.

he thought) fortunately placed opposite their win- | read, and do plain work; and so Matty heard not of dow. Not that the boy understood all he read, but it. She had nothing particular to do that evening, he imbibed its influence, and clasping his large brow and the sight of a stranger did her good, because she within his palms, he would weigh and consider, and expected a gossip. feel, within that narrow room, where poverty still Fingered-though then, with their simple and few wants, rather as a shadow than a substance—and his heart throbbing as he thought, "What shall I do to be great?" even, it might have been, when the chastened and subdued spirit of his young but almost sightless mother murmured in her half-broken sleep, "What shall I do to be saved?" And then, as the spring advanced, and night and morning blended sweetly together, he hastened to his work joyfullyfor he loved the labor that gave him food and knowledge. Matty would say his "food went into an ill skin-never did credit to man or mortial;" while his silent master, absorbed in his occupations, and pretty much abstracted from the every-day goings-on of his establishment-having, as he said of himself, an honest curse of a housekeeper and a jewel of a boy-was, nevertheless, sometimes startled by the singular questions Richard asked, meekly and modestly seeking for information, from him whom his enthusiastic nature believed one of the mild lights of

literature.

What will youths who are pampered or wooed into learning say of the circulating boy of a circulating library, performing the menial offices of his station, yet working his mind ardently and steadily onward?

One evening, after he had gone out with his books, his mother entered the shop, timidly and with hesitating step, which those who struggle against blindness unconsciously assume. Matty was there, removing some papers; Peter, the most silent of all dogs, lay upon the mat, and Mrs. Dolland stumbled over him: Peter only gave vent to a stifled remonstrance, but that was enough to set Matty into a passion.

"Couldn't you see the dog!" she exclaimed. "If you war a customer tin times over, you had no call to the baste; he's neither pens, ink, wafers, books, nor blotting-paper-no, nor the writer of a book-to be trampled under your feet."

"I did not see him," she said meekly. "Can't you use your eyes?"

The unconscious roughness cut like a razor. "I did," she replied, turning her large, sorrowful, and dimmed eyeballs toward Matty-"I did; I used them night and day, until it was the will of God to take away their light."

"God look down upon you!" exclaimed the woman tenderly. "Sure it isn't going blind you are-a young woman like you to go blind?"

"I wanted to see Mr. Whitelock," she said, without heeding Matty's observation. "I wanted to speak a few words to him."

Matty loved a gossip. She never suspected the fair, frail, trembling woman, "going blind," to be Richard's mother. He never mentioned his mother's blindness; he could not speak of it; he hoped it would never be worse than it was. She could still

"Ay, indeed; that is, he's not so jist at the prisent time, but he'll become so, like all the rest of them boys, one of these days."

"God forbid!" ejaculated the widow.

"Amin!" said Matty; but he'll be sure to come to it at last."

"Come to what?" inquired the alarmed mother. "To all sorts and kinds of contrariness," replied Matty, rapidly; "boys can't help it, you see; it's their nature; they're not patient, bidable, gentle creatures like us-not they! Mischief, and all kinds of murther, and upsetting, and latch-keys, and fidgets, and police-courts, and going out at nights, and staying out all day (though that's a good riddance) and boxing, and apple-stealing, falling in love, and kicking up shindies."

"I beg your pardon, but I do not understand you," interrupted Mrs. Dolland, with more determination than she had exercised for years. She felt as if this strange, abrupt, half-mad woman was stringing together a set of accusations against her child.

"I'm obleeged to you, ma'am, for the compliment," said Matty, dropping a curtsey; "but, as that's neither here nor there, what's your business with the masther?"

"That I can only tell himself," she replied.

"Well," muttered Matty, "that beats! But the women now have no modesty. Them English is all a silent set—no sociability in them. Tell himself!-as if it wasn't more natural for a half-blind craythur like that to discoorse a woman than a man. Well, well! No wonder my hair's gone gray and my heart hard!"

There was something almost courtly in Mr. Whitelock's manner of addressing women. People in his own class of life, who observed it, thought it ridiculous, and never speculated as to how this politeness became engrafted on his nature. He placed a seat for Mrs. Dolland in his little parlor; and, though it was a warm autumn evening, he moved it to keep her out of the air that blew over a box of yellowish, stunted mignonette, and two sickly wall-flowers, which graced the sill of his back window; he also pushed his own chair as far as he could from the widow's, but, like all persons with impaired vision, she moved nearer to him, and turned her restless eyes toward the door.

"It is shut close," said the bookseller.
[To be continued.

MEDITATIONS ON THE LAST JUDGMENT.

BY ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH.

66

THE TRIAL BY BATTLE.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHAMPION.

A TALE OF CHIVALRY.

(Continued from page 330.)

ciliation to the church. Henry's only reply was the capture of the city. The pope fled to the Castle of St. Angelo, where he was put in a state of blockade by Henry, who placed upon the papal throne the Anti-Pope Guibert, from whose hand he received the imperial crown. He had scarcely done this before he received the annoying intelligence that the Saxons had elected in his room, Hermann, Count of Luxembourg. Henry repassed the Apennines, beat the Saxons, subdued Thuringia, and took Hermann prisoner, whom he permitted to live and die unknown in an obscure corner of his empire. He once more re-entered Italy, where he caused his son Conrad to be elected King of the Romans. Believing he had settled peace on a firm basis, he came back to Germany, and turned his arms against the Bavarians and Suabians, who still remained in a state of revolt.

His son, whom he had just made king of the Romans, and who aspired to the empire, conspired at that time against his father, raised an army, and got Pope Urban II. to excommunicate him a second time. Henry upon this convoked the diet to Aix-laChapelle, laid open before it his paternal grief, and displayed the wounds of a heart wrung by filial ingratitude, and demanded that his second son, Henry, should be acknowledged for king of the Romans, in the place of his brother. In the midst of the sitting, he received a mysterious intimation that his presence was required at Cologne, where, he was told, an important secret would be made known to him. Henry quitted the diet in great haste; and found two of the noblest barons in the empire, Guthram de Falkenbourg and Walter de Than, waiting for him at the gates of his palace. The emperor invited them to enter with him, and led them into his chamber, when perceiving sadness and gloom painted on their faces, he demanded "why they appeared so thoughtful and sorrowful!"

THE Emperor Henry IV. of Germany, the husband of the falsely accused empress, was one of the bravest and most unfortunate princes who ever sat upon a throne. He had succeeded his father, Henry the Black, in 1036, at the age of six years, and the diet had given to Agnes of Aquetaine the administration of the affairs of state during his minority. But the princes and barons of Germany feeling themselves humiliated by their subjection to a foreign female, revolted against the empire, and Otho, Margrave of Saxony, commenced that series of civil wars, in which the emperor was destined to consume his life. Thus Henry IV. was always engaged in contests, first with his uncles, and then with his son; sometimes an emperor, sometimes a fugitive; to-day a proscriber, to-morrow proscribed; but always a man of war and wo," even in his greatest triumphs. After having deposed Pope Gregory VII. -after having, in expiation of that sacrilege, crossed the Apennines on foot, his staff in his hand, like a mendicant, in the depth of winter-after having waited three days in the court of the Castle of Canassa without clothes, without fire, without food, till it pleased his highness to admit him into his presence, he kissed his feet, and swore on the cross to submit himself to his authority; for at this price alone would the pope absolve the imperial penitent of the guilt of sacrilege; but the humiliation of the emperor displeased and disgusted the Lombards, who accused him of cowardice. Threatened by them with deposition, if he did not break the shameful league he had made with the pope, he purchased peace with the Lombards by renouncing his submission to Gregory. His acceptance of these terms set him at variance with the German barons, who elected Rodolphe, of Suabia, in his place. Henry, who had gone to Italy as a suppliant, returned to Germany a soldier, though under the ban of the church, for his rival, Rodolphe, had received from Pope Gregory a crown of gold, in token of his investure by him of temporal dominion, and a bull invoking the malediction of heaven upon his enemy. Henry defeated and slew Ro- No other tidings would have made Henry of Gerdolphe at the battle of Wolskieur, near Gera, after many turn pale, for he had only been married to the which he returned victorious and furious into Italy, empress two years, for whom he felt the tenderness bringing with him the Bishop Guibert, whom he had of a parent, and the faithful love of a husband. His made pope. This time it was for Gregory to trem-union with this angelic young woman had given him ble, who could not expect more mercy than he had shown to Henry. He shut himself up in Rome, and when the emperor appeared under the walls, sent a legate to make up the quarrel, by the offer of the investiture of the crown, and absolution and recon

"Because the majesty of the throne is in danger," replied Guthram, with some abruptness. "Who has endangered the throne?" demanded the emperor.

"The Empress Praxida, your wife," said Guth

ram.

the only happy hours he had passed during his stormy and unfortunate life. He had not courage at this miserable moment even to ask what his wife had done, but was gathering the strength of a failing heart to do so, when Guthram broke the ominous

silence, by saying, "she has done what we cannot pass by unnoticed, for the honor of the imperial throne, and we should deserve the name of traitors to our sovereign lord, if we should hesitate to make her misconduct known to him.”

"What has she done?" again demanded the emperor, growing paler than before.

"What is the matter, my lord?" asked the em press, in a tone of alarm.

"Woman," replied the emperor, raising his head and showing her his tearful eyes, "you have seen me for four years carrying a heavy cross; you have seen my crown a crown of thorns; you have seen my face bathed in the sweat of toil, my brow in blood; but "In your absence she has encouraged the love of you never saw my eyelids moistened with tears. a young knight, and that so openly," replied Guth-Well, behold me now-and see me weep!" ram, "that if she gives birth to a son, however the people may rejoice in that event, your nobility will mourn; for though any master is good enough for the multitude, none but the noblest in the empire can command the highest nobles in the world, who will render homage to none but the son of an emperor."

Henry supported himself against the chair of state on which he leaned, or he would have fallen to the floor, for he remembered that only a month before, the empress had written to him to announce her maternal hopes, with the pleasure natural to a young woman about to become a mother.

"What has become of the knight?" asked the emperor.

"He quitted Cologne as suddenly as he entered it, without any person knowing from whence he came, or whither he is going. His country and name are secrets with which we are unacquainted, but you had better ask the empress, she perhaps, can satisfy your majesty."

"And why do you weep, my dearly-loved lord?" replied the empress, in a tone of sorrowful inquiry.

Because, abandoned by my people, denied by my vassals, cursed by the church, and proscribed by my son, I had nothing but you in the world—and you, Praxida, you too have betrayed me."

The empress stood like a statue, only her complexion, varying from red to pale, betrayed her feel ings. " My lord," said she, "it is not true. You are my liege lord and my sovereign master; but if any other man than yourself had dared to utter such words, I would answer that he lied through envy of malice."

The emperor turned in the direction of his cabinet. and in a loud voice said, "Come in." The door opened, and Guthram de Falkenbourg, and Walter de Than entered the imperial chamber. The empress. at the sight of her enemies, trembled all over. They advanced to the other side of the emperor's chair. and, holding up their hands, prepared to make their unjust accusation good upon the first sign he might

He motioned them to speak, and they were not slow to avail themselves of his permission.

"Sire," said they, "what we have told you true; and we are ready to support the charge at the peril of our bodies and souls, two against two, against any knights who may dare to dispute the truth of our impeachment of the empress."

"Do you hear what they say, madam? for it shall be done as they have demanded; and if, in a year and a day, you cannot find any knights to clear your fame by a victorious combat, you will be burned alive in the great square of Cologne, in the face of the people, and by the torch of the common hangman."

Very well," replied the emperor. "Enter, gen-give. tlemen, that cabinet." Then the emperor summoned his chamberlain, and bade him conduct the empress to his chamber. As soon as the emperor was alone, he threw himself into the chair, like a man who had lost his personal strength and mental firmness. He who had endured with unbending fortitude civil and foreign wars, the ban of the church, and the filial revolt, yielded to a doubt. IIis head, which had borne the weight of a crown for five-and-forty years, without bending beneath the burden, grew feeble under the weight of a suspicion, and hung down as if the hand of a giant was upon it. In a moment the man, who had scarcely passed his full meridian of intellect, forgot every thing-empire, ban, malediction, revolt. He remembered nothing but his wife, the only human being who possessed his entire confidence, and who had deceived him more basely than any other creature had yet done. Much as he had "Well, be it so," said the emperor; and he sum experienced, throughout his long regnal life, of dis-moned his guards, to whose wardship he consigned loyalty and guile, tears fell from his eyes, for the rod of misfortune, like that of Moses, had struck the rock so forcibly, that it had drawn these drops from a source hitherto sealed up and barren.

The empress entered unseen, for her light step had not been heard by her unhappy husband. Fair, blooming, and blue-eyed, with a graceful form, of tall and slender proportions, this daughter of a northern clime approached her lord with a sweet smile, and with almost filial reverence united to conjugal affection, imprinted a chaste kiss on the troubled brow of her lord, who shrank and shuddered as if the touch of her rosy lips had been the fangs of a serpent.

"My lord, I invoke the aid of God," replied the empress, "and I hope, by His grace, my truth and innocence will find vindicators, and will be com pletely established."

his empress. By his command she was conveyed to the lowest apartment in the castle, which differed in nothing from a prison but in name.

of

She had been imprisoned nearly a twelve-month and had given birth to a son, condemned, like herself to the pile. This babe she nourished at her own bosom, and reared with her own hands, like one the wives of the people. None of her women paid her any attention or rendered her the smallest service, but Douce, Marchioness of Provence, who, having abandoned her own country, then the theatre of civil war, to seek an asylum at the court of her suzerain, had remained faithful to her mistress in her

As to the poor emperor, no one suffered like him; struck by this blow at once as sovereign, husband, and father, he had vowed publicly to join the Crusades, in the hope of averting the wrath of heaven; and the day he had fixed for the vindication or execution of the empress, would bring to him as severe a trial as to that unfortunate and injured princess. He had, at length, given the matter into the care of heaven, and, immuring himself in the most private apartments in his palace of Cologne, gave up all business, whether public or private, having no heart to attend to any thing whatever. Such was the state of his mind when the dawn of the three hundred and sixty-fifth day found him still miserable, and his ac-plied the knight, who had no intention of abandoning cused empress championless.